Comparison
Data Retention vs Custom Scripts
Many teams start with Apex or scheduled jobs for deletion. Production-grade retention needs batch safety, relationship-aware deletes, and an audit trail your risk and legal teams can stand behind.
Governor limits & batching
Custom scripts
Custom Apex hits 10K DML rows, heap, and CPU limits. You write retries, queues, and failure handling by hand.
Data Retention Manager
Data Retention chunks work into safe batches with retry logic and progress tracking built in.
Cascade & business rules
Custom scripts
Master-Detail, lookups, and “delete unless contract active” logic spread across fragile classes.
Data Retention Manager
Declarative policies encode cascade behaviour and exceptions (contracts, holds) in one place.
Audit trail for regulators
Custom scripts
Spreadsheets and ad hoc logs rarely satisfy “show me proof you deleted this data.”
Data Retention Manager
Every run writes to Salesforce-native audit objects: rule, record, timestamp, before-state, outcome.
Maintenance
Custom scripts
Every Salesforce release, new object, or package can break assumptions. Engineering owns the backlog.
Data Retention Manager
Managed package updates ship with regression-tested retention and deletion behaviour.
See also: How Data Retention works · Audit trail documentation.
See retention automation in your org
30-minute walkthrough of policy setup, cascade behaviour, and regulator-ready audit export.